…As Long as Space is Time

Many remarks have been made about the Colorado and its stupendous canyons, not all of them complimentary. There is the quoted statement of the thirsty pioneer who, having crossed the deserts of southern Arizona, saw the muddy stream and remarked in genuine surprise, "Why it's wet!" Another popular description of the river is the derogatory "It's too thick to drink and not thick enough to plow." But the winner of them all came from Lieutenant Joseph Ives, who took a look at the country around the Grand Canyon and among other comments on the unique and stunning terrain said: "It is altogether valueless . it can be approached only from the south and after entering it there is nothing to do but leave. Ours has been the first and will doubtless be the last party of whites to visit this profitless locality." The lieutenant was wrong from start to finish. His party was not the first and not the last to look at the Grand Canyon, and as to its being valueless, the opinion has been pretty well upset by Indians, poets, painters, geologists, several million tourists, the Santa Fe railroad, the Fred Harvey System, and the United States government.

Padre Francisco Tomás Garcés, whose name is not without renown in the West, is supposed to have named the river in 1776 when he descended to its rushing waters where they are joined by Cataract Creek in the land of the Havasupai Indians. The padre's choice of a name was due to the reddish color at this point. He didn't call it the Red River, for that would have been Rio Rojo; it wasn't exactly red, but it was reddish (the padre was a stickler for exact details); and therefore he called it the Rio Colorado.

Later in the same year the two padres, Escalante and Dominguez, made the first recorded crossing of the river in its canyon regions in what is now southern Utah. This is the famous ford, now impassable, that was later used by Brigham Young's intrepid scout, Jacob Hamblin, and has been known for many years as the Crossing of the Fathers.

It is somewhat significant that on this powerful artery of life in the Southwest man has built two temples. They are seemingly worlds apart in geography, concept, and purpose; each is, however, an excellent representative of its age and culture. The first, primarily religious, was also utilitarian. The second was primarily utilitarian, but not at all without some quintessential religion. The first was father Garcés' mission of the Purísima Concepción built in 1779 on the California side across from where Yuma, Arizona, stands today.

culture. The first, primarily religious, was also utilitarian. The second was primarily utilitarian, but not at all without some quintessential religion. The first was father Garcés' mission of the Purísima Concepción built in 1779 on the California side across from where Yuma, Arizona, stands today.

The second was Elwood Mead's Boulder Dam, completed in Black Canyon between Nevada and Arizona in 1936.

Here we have the old and the new. Here we have the vestiges of medieval culture contrasting with the twentieth century dynamo.

Father Garcés' project was the dream of his life; Elwood Mead's project was the dream of his life and both men died just as the dream came to its complete fulfillment.

The mission of the Purísima Concepción was the spearhead of a new religion thrust into a land which knew it not. Boulder Dam was the powerhouse which brought 1,835,000 horsepower of cheap electric energy to a large portion of the American Southwest. Following closely on religious considerations in establishing the Purísima Concepción was the economic and utilitarian motive that has never been quite absent from the history of the church. Following closely the demand for power and conservation came a wide application to the problems entailed by a surrogate of the old religious principle, the field of modern analytical science. The contrasts between the two temples is not so great, but rather a matter of relative point of view. Even the name may indicate somewhat their kindred though differently conceived purposes: the mission of the purest conception; the dam of the greatest conservation.

Father Garcés and his colleagues represent one kind of river in red, coursing through the minds of men in the Southwest the river of religion; Elwood Mead and his scientists represent another kind of river in red, coursing through transmission lines and switchyards and the army of golemlike towers which march across the deserts with the power-carrying conductors the river of electric energy. But it is the eternal Colorado itself which made both the church and the powerhouse possible, and as far as the river is concerned it can't tell one from the other.